Research-Based Reading Strategies for Any Curriculum
In this episode, we explore how research-based reading strategies can help educators support all students in meeting the learning objectives of any reading curriculum.
Jennifer Serravallo’s Reading Strategies Book 2.0 is curriculum agnostic, offering flexible, evidence-based strategies that work across programs like CKLA, Wonders, and Wit & Wisdom.
This discussion highlights how strategic instruction:
- Makes lesson objectives more explicit
- Supports students at varying skill levels
- Aligns with state standards and widely adopted curricula
A standout feature of The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 is its exclusive skill progressions and standards correlations, which help teachers quickly match strategies to lesson objectives. This makes it easier than ever to guide students toward reading proficiency.
TRANSCRIPT
Brett Whitmarsh:
Jen, why would a teacher who's already using a reading program need The Reading Strategies 2.0 book?
Jennifer Serravallo:
Well, I have studied a lot of core programs with my team, many that are being adopted around the country that are supposedly science of reading aligned and are on state approval lists. We've done deep dives into these programs, and what I find is that while the objectives in the programs do cover the range of things that kids need to know and be able to do, they don't often break down the skills into steps. The way that the strategies are phrased in The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 is a way to talk about skills explicitly with kids and to really show them and break it down so that they have transferable language they can use across contexts. So the good news is that it's really easy to use The Reading Strategies Book to just beef up the language a little bit more and make it more explicit and make connections between what a lesson objective is and what a strategy from The Reading Strategies Book... How a strategy from The Reading Strategies Book would explain to kids, how do I actually do this thing you're asking me to do?
Right? So if core program, for example, is asking the student to infer about a character, oftentimes that's as far as it'll go. It'll say "Infer about the character and write a paragraph explaining how the character changed across the story." It doesn't say how to do that. It doesn't tell the kids where to look for the change. It doesn't give kids any insight. So the strategies could help kids to say, "Oh, I know that a change... I could look for a change in feeling. I could look for a change in action. I can look for characters responding to that character differently," just to be a little bit more explicit and clear.
Brett:
And I think one of the key things you sort of hinted to it there is that the reading strategies help all reading skills and objectives outlined in a reading program. Can you speak a little bit more about that?
Jen:
Yeah, I mean, the book is very comprehensive. It's kindergarten through eighth grade. It's everything from before kids learn their alphabet, the kinds of oral language development you might work on through decoding and fluency and comprehension. I also include writing about reading conversational skills. So these are all things you're going to see in your core program. These are all the kinds of skills that core programs are aiming to get kids to be able to have. But again, it's a question of whether those core programs are really breaking things down into explicit steps. And I would argue that teachers could be helped just to make their lessons a bit more explicit by breaking down the language into a step-by-step how to, like it's described in the Strategies book. I also think beyond just correlating strategies to the lesson objectives as written in the core program, another thing we also want to be thinking about is, well, what if a student's not ready for that lesson? Or what if a student needs extra support or what if there's a skill gap for that student that doesn't relate to the lesson of today? For example, what if I've got a fifth grader reading a historical fiction text and it's asking them to infer about the symbolism of the setting and they're still working on decoding skills, or they're still working on fluency skills?
Then I would say teachers could use that Reading Strategies Book to dip into find extra lesson ideas. Those lessons could then become... If most of the class needs, it could be extra whole class lessons that you use to supplement what the core program's offering or it could be that's fueling your small group instruction, that you're finding small groups of students and you're meeting them where they are. You're giving them the strategies they need for their particular skill needs. And then you're still doing the lessons as written for the whole class, which are often with grade level text, which would be complex for a lot of kids and asking kids to do quite high level work with those texts as well.
Brett:
Now, you've continued this work as well by creating alignments. Can you speak to a little bit about what you've done in terms of the alignments for the reading strategies and the core reading programs?
Jen:
Yeah, so part of the work with my team of literacy specialists was to do a really deep dive, like I said, into a lot of these core programs. And I have on my website a bunch of program alignments that are available. In many cases, they are like module by module, lesson by lesson. In other cases they're more broad. So this entire module is asking for these objectives. Here's some lessons to help you from The Reading Strategies Book. So we did Expeditionary Learning, Amplify CKLA, Wonders, Into Reading and Wit and Wisdom so far. And this of course required a deep study of these programs and then matching up the lessons and the modules with specific strategies just to again, help teachers find the language that's going to help the teaching be even more explicit.
Brett:
And we talked in a previous episode about the depth of the research inside of Reading strategies 2.0. With that in mind, could these also work with state standards as well? Have you done state standards work as well?
Jen:
I have done state standards and Common Core Standard, the Texas TExES Standards, the New York Next Generation Standards, Florida Best Standards, Virginia Standards of Learning, New Jersey Student Learning Standards, and the brand new Georgia K-12 standards that are going to be released this school year. We just did that last month because some educators in Georgia asked us to do that for them. You wouldn't be surprised to learn that they match up. A lot of the people who are writing standards at the state level are leaning on the exact same research base that I'm leaning on in the Strategies book, and it really was kind of easy to match up specific standards with the strategies from the book. I actually love that Georgia's standards had some language in it around engagement and motivation too, which is a whole chapter in the book. Many standards actually leave that out. So you might find that there's a match up between standards and then my book even is a little more comprehensive.
Brett:
I think it's incredibly important to mention here again that this is why it's important to have Reading Strategies 2.0, that you have just done so much newer work in this edition of the book, the state standards, of course, the correlations. So if I'm a teacher listening to this, I understand I've got the correlations, I understand I've got the state standards. How now might a teacher quickly integrate 2.0 Into their reading programs lesson?
Jen:
The fastest way is honestly to just look at wherever the summary is of that lesson and to see what are the objectives, and then match that objective to the hierarchy of goals from The Reading Strategies Book. So it'll say right on there, the students are going to be working on retelling a story. So that correlates to the plot and setting chapter, retelling is one of the skills, and you can easily find the strategies that go with it. Another thing I should mention is that in the 2.0 edition, I've added skill progressions within each of the chapters, which teachers have told me have been game changing for them to help them to really quickly find strategies that match up.
The skill progressions aren't correlated to a grade level, but you can see the description of the kinds of things kids should be able to do and how they align to your grade level state standards. And you can easily match the strategies up with what's being expected for your grade level or what's being expected in your particular lesson. But if you happen to be using one of the programs that I've already done a correlation for, I've made it super easy for you. You just go to the correlation guide and you can find it right there. Maybe when you're about to teach a brand new unit, just sit down, look at... Or module, look at that module, see what should kids know and be able to do by the end of that module. Go to the correlation guide, see what are the strategies that can help me flag them in your book and just people carry the book around on their lap while they're teaching. It's made that way. We have it spiral bound now.
Brett:
Yeah, I was going to say.
Jen:
[inaudible 00:09:45] visual. You can quickly scan the page if you have it open in your lap, and then just be able to use it and even point to the chart right there on the page when you're working with the kids.
Brett:
I was going to say the spiral bound, you got there before I could just help pop-
Jennifer:
People love that spiral bound, yeah.
Brett:
People love that spiral bound. And if you've seen any of the videos we've done on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok with the spiral bound, the ease of use of being able to have that and be able to grab and go. And again, we've shown the pages of the skill progressions in those videos as well. Could you give us a specific skill progression walkthrough or example?
Jen:
Yeah, sure. So let's talk about expository texts. There's a lot of informational texts in these core programs and looking at the research from the past decade or so, the amount of nonfiction or informational text or expository reading that kids do in school is typically less than narrative or fictional text. So maybe this is an area where kids need a little extra support. We want to make sure that we're including really clear strategies. So let's think about one of the goals in The Reading Strategies Book that helps kids with expository reading is comprehending key details. So understanding the details that the author teaches you in the text that relate in some way to the main idea. The skill progressions are set up like an if-then, so that you can quickly scan the if column and say, "This describes the student I'm working with, this is what they need."
So on the if side, we'll see some things like "the student is able to recall a few details, but they need help remembering more of what they read." Then the next step is "they're able to list some facts and they're ready to be able to visualize or describe those facts." So they're just sort of rehashing what's in the text, but you want them to be able to kind of elaborate a little bit. And then the next step on the skill progression is that they're remembering, they're visualizing, and now we want them to think which of these details actually match with a main idea. Now, this, by the way, is key to helping kids to do a good summary of a text. They need a main idea and they need details that relate to that main idea. And then eventually, maybe we're working on putting that together, putting together that strong summary and talking about how do the details relate to each other, explaining how the details support the main idea, not just listing those details. That's a little bit more advanced. So that's the gist of the skill progression.
So if I were a teacher about to teach a lesson and I knew that my kids needed to be able to summarize an expository text, I might start off by just watching them. Maybe ask them to do a stop and jot during a read aloud, summarize what we read today, and I would go take a quick peek at them, or I might say, "Let me look at the lesson and see how complex is this text compared to what I know my kids can successfully read or that I've seen they've successfully read in the past." Or I might rely on my past knowledge of what the students were able to do when it comes to recalling information from a text and using that information well in a summary.
So I'd go to the skill progression. I'd say "My students, they are... After reading expository texts, they can spit back some facts. So they're good with the first category, but really I feel like I want to help them to think about how do the details relate to that main idea and make sure that they're picking the key details, not just random details." So I'm going to then go to the then side of my skill progression, and I see strategies 9.9, 9.10, 9.11, 9.12 and 9.13 all help me with that particular scenario. So within the goal of key details, but that particular scenario of what they need, again, informed by my knowledge of my students, informed by how complex the task is or how complex the text is in the lesson that's already in my core program.
Brett:
My thanks to Jen for her time today. This is a critical part of The Reading Strategies Book 2.0, the skill progressions and how it matches with standards correlations, and how it can fit inside any reading program across the country. So be sure to check out and upgrade to The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 for more information on that. You can check out heineman.com or you can check out Jen Serravallo.com. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. Be sure to like and subscribe for more, and of course, be sure to check out all the other conversations in this series.
Get The Reading Strategies Book 2.0
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Serravallo is the author of The New York Times' bestselling The Reading Strategies Book 2.0 and The Writing Strategies Book, which have been translated into Spanish, French, and Chinese. These and her other popular books and resources help teachers make goal-directed responsive strategy instruction, conferring, and small group work doable in every classroom. Her newest titles are The Reading Strategies Book 2.0; Teaching Writing in Small Groups; A Teacher’s Guide to Reading Conferences, and the assessment and teaching resource Complete Comprehension for Fiction and Nonfiction.
Jen is a frequently invited speaker at national and regional conferences and travels throughout the US and Canada to provide full-day workshops and to work with teachers and students in classrooms. She is also an experienced online educator who regularly offers live webinar series and full-day online workshops.
Jen began her career in education as an NYC public school teacher. Now as a consultant, she has spent the last fifteen+ years helping teachers across the country create literacy classrooms where students are joyfully engaged, and the instruction is meaningfully individualized to students' goals. Jen is also a member of Parents Magazine Board of Advisors for education and literacy.
Jen holds a BA from Vassar College and an MA from Teachers College, where she has also taught graduate and undergraduate classes.
Learn more about Jen and her work at Hein.pub/serravallo, on Twitter @jserravallo, or Instagram @jenniferserravallo.
